1 The Mystique

“In a non-deterministic world, probability has nothing to do with incomplete knowledge. Quantum mechanics is the first example in human experience where probabilities play an essential role even when there is nothing to be ignorant about.” — N. David Mermin

“Your experience with things that you have seen before is incomplete. The behavior of things on a very tiny scale is simply different. An atom does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring and oscillating. Nor does it behave like a miniature representation of the solar system with little planets going around in orbits. Nor does it appear to be somewhat like a cloud or fog of some sort surrounding the nucleus. It behaves like nothing you have ever seen before.” — Richard Feynman

“Anyone moving from the world of only black-and-white to the world of color is opening up the door to a new world — a world ripe with new possibilities and new expression…. This same flood of richness and freshness comes from entering the quantum world.” — Dan Styer

“No accept­able expla­na­tion for the mirac­u­lous iden­tity of par­ti­cles of the same type has ever been put for­ward. That iden­tity must be regarded, not as a triv­i­ality, but as a cen­tral mys­tery of physics.” — C.W. Misner, K.S. Thorne, and J.A. Wheeler